Category Archives: The art of doing without doing

by admin

Learn to play video games without actually playing any.

The title is a bit of a misnomer. You can’t really learn to play without actually doing it. However you can learn enough about certain video games to be able to talk with your friends as if you did play them. Do you want to know all the secrets of a game, or how some people manage to beat hard levels or whatever, and then watch a video on the game in question. There are always videos made of your favorite games.

We’re going to take a short vacation from the ‘Monday’ philosophy and actually attempt to learn something. You heard that right, learn. I take it you want to learn about the video game in question, to that end, I propose you take down some notes about the game video you’re watching. This may be the only or at least one of the very few times we’re actually attempting something productive, but since video games are fun, and watching video games are better than actually spending the time to play, I figured it won’t hurt you too much.

First thing you’re going to want to take note of is how long the game takes to play. Usually if the video is what they call a ‘longplay‘ video then the whole game is played, and you can either write down the length of the video or the length of all the levels put together to get a good idea.

Next you want to see where people have the most trouble. Most people aren’t video game playing wizards and will mess up frequently and in fact on their own videos. Some are geniuses and like to document that with video, however, you probably want to watch the ones that mess up as well, after all this is research.

You want to note the interface. Granted you aren’t playing, so you may not know how the controls work, but then again if you’re researching the game, you know what platform and thereby what controls are being used for what. You want to note what kind of information is being shown on the screen. Is there a scoring system, levels, health, what kind of weapons? Is timing required, or is it story driven?

Some video games are known for their great stories, and some are not. So basically you want to watch and note the story. Maybe there’s not much of a story, and the story is really in the game play.

Now armed with this knowledge you can go into the game itself and play the whole game finding all of its secrets knowing just where people had trouble so you won’t have that trouble. I said the title was a bit of a misnomer. Well actually that’s not correct. You can learn to play games by watching videos of them, but you have to apply the things you just learned.

Since this is ‘Monday’, I’ll probably just watch the videos and pretend I played the game. Just make sure if you tell your friends you played the game that they haven’t watched the same videos as you have. That would be rather awkward.

Until ‘Monday’

by admin

10 More Awesome Internet Time Sinks

Remember that article 10 Awesome Internet Time Sinks. Well I was just made aware of even MORE awesome internet time sinks. Wastin’ time since 1975. ‘Monday’ is the time-wasting capital of the world and so without further ado:

Time Sink #11: ICanHasCheezburger. Cats have been a part of the internet ever since, well, All Gore invented the internet. When sites like Youtube came online there was no shortage of cute cats doing cute things all over the internet. So someone thought of something even cuter. What if they took goofy looking pictures of cats and put funny captions in a sort of grammatically and quirky ways and then call them lolcats? And thus Lolcats were born. ICanHasCheezBurger is the premiere site for lolcats. This wastes time like nobody’s business, so sit back, relax, and say ‘awwwww’.

Time Sink #12: Hulu. Hulu is another video site but instead of user created content this features commercial content such as movies and full TV show episodes. While I don’t personally use it, I know there’s a lot of people who do, and use that as their primary sort of television programming.

Time Sink #13: Dark Roasted Blend. Now I haven’t really looked at this very much but every once in a while something interesting comes up and it linked here. Apparently it’s pretty darn popular. From their about page – The “Dark Roasted Blend” online magazine is dedicated to the on-going quest for wisdom and beauty, for all things cool and wonderful in our world, and beyond – in the spiritual realm. The “Thrilling Wonder Publication” bi-line stands for the sense of wonder that has been largely neglected in our cynical times. To that end, our “Thrilling Wonder” family of sites try to promote “the intense, wonderful and never-boring” side of things.

Time Sink #14: Damn Interesting! – As its name implies it’s a bunch of articles about interesting stuff. This stuff will just take all of your time and then some. Some of the articles include “The Wrath of the Killdozer” about a man who was so frustrated about city zoning changes that he took a bulldozer and started plowing through town, “Doctor Watson’s Phobia Factory” about a doctor who supposed that babies could be trained to fear furry moving creatures, and “The Wilhelm Scream” which is a sound effect that was created a long time ago and used on many motion pictures even until today. This is just a small sampling as there are tons more interesting articles there.

Time Sink #15: The Halfbakery. The site for half-baked ideas. According to Wikipedia – “The Halfbakery is a community-based ideas bank used by people who wish to propose and develop (not always serious) half-baked inventions. Among many similar such sites it has distinguished itself by minimalism, irreverence, and a cast of regulars whose takes on suggested inventions are often funnier than the original submission.”

Time Sink #16: Badass of the week. Well it’s pretty much what the title says. Each week it has a new ‘Badass’ it features usually some historical figure but sometimes mythological ones who were uber tough and manly. This week’s article (When the article was written) was about a wolverine, and yes the animal, named M3 in Montana’s Glacier National Park. Often fraught with humor here’s just a small sample: “it’s because wolverines are some of the most serious, hardcore, face-obliterating badasses of the animal world. Ferocious, two-foot-tall killing machines capable of dismembering all who oppose them in a frenzied torrent of gnashing sharp pointy teeth and adorable malevolence and then trotting off into the snow-covered sub-zero wasteland like a pissed-off cartoon character.” Of course there is more bad language and fun to be had by all but it is pretty hilarious.

Time Sink #17: Television Tropes and Idioms. TV Tropes is a site about devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. They claim tropes are not the same as clichés. They’ve also expanded into other media, but TV is where they started. For instance under Characters as Device it states “In service to the plot, characters are given these roles, sometimes making them just plot devices with lines. ” with a type of character device such as Adult Child which states “Typically, a main or recurring character who regularly interacts with characters noticeably younger, usually resulting in their maturity level regressing to roughly the same level (if not even lower). They’re still capable of acting their age… they just usually don’t. ” This can get pretty time consuming going through everything this site has which is why this is classified as a time sink.

Time Sink #18: Snopes. Snopes.com (warning popup) is the definitive internet reference source for urban legends, folklore and myths, rumors and misinformation. One such myth is that Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen before death which is of course false as the website says. They sometimes list some of these little tidbits with a key for whether it’s false or true or they’re not sure if it’s true. It’s pretty interesting if you’re interested in some rumor or other.

Time Sink #19: LifeHacker. “Lifehacker is a web log about life hacks and software which launched on January 31, 2005″. A hack is a software engineering term meaning a work around to make something easier or to fix something temporarily. Actually the word hack originated somewhere in the 1950′s from MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club meaning a clever result that is done quickly, and is usually inelegant. It’s where we get the word hacker from. A life hack is a way to automate every day boring mundane tasks to make it easier and quicker. According to Wikipedia – “British technology journalist Danny O’Brien coined the term life hack after polling a group of productive geeks on the details of their work processes. O’Brien discovered a pattern among these super-productive programmers: that they devised and used “embarrassing” scripts and shortcuts to get their work done”.

Time Sink #20: Slashdot. Slashdot is billed as news for nerds and is a technology related news site. Features user submitted current affairs news stories about science and technology related topics. “Summaries of stories and links to news articles are submitted by Slashdot’s own readers, and each story becomes the topic of a threaded discussion among users. Discussion is moderated by a user-based moderation system.”

So that’s the 10 more awesome internet time sinks and great ways to waste time.

Until ‘Monday’

by admin

And now something spam related (not the meat product)!

We here at ‘Monday’ have no shame. So it’s without any further ado I would like to spam my readers, er, I mean shamelessly plug promote this wonderful blog. We like to get something for nothing, and to that end we’re going to try to get you to expose us. Here’s how: Blogarama is a web directory that ‘Monday’ has been submitted to. They will expedite the review process if ‘Monday’ gets 10 unique clicks. So what I’d like you to do is go to the sidebar, and click on the little badge that says Blogarama (it’s the one with the red box and a white check mark in it). It’s just that easy. Also I would like you to do a few other things, while you’re on the sidebar, click on the other badges (and the project wonderful ads at the top as well). If you have a Twitter or Facebook account I would like you to share posts you find interesting. If you use Stumbleupon, Digg, and Reddit, share us with those too.

Together we can make a difference. Well not really, but maybe you can make me some money by bringing more web-traffic. Also if you have suggestions on future articles let me know and I’ll at least consider them. (More than likely I will just take the idea, change it a little bit, make an article from it, and not even let you know that it was your idea I used. The Wellington men are class acts all the way, just check out my about page.)

Until ‘Monday’